Barbara Pym, another excellent British novelist, never met Ivy Compton-Burnett, but they had much in common. Their novels and their styles had some similarities; both found themselves compared to Jane Austen.
Pym, of a younger generation, first read ICB when she was a student at Oxford in the Thirties, and was not impressed. As an undergraduate she made the acquaintance of Robert Liddell, always known to her as 'Jock'. At first she admired him from a distance, as she did his friend Henry Harvey - the two men shared digs. Later she had an affair of sorts with Henry: he was less interested than she was. When he left Oxford both Pym and Liddell missed his company. Their friendship prospered and they remained close, at least by correspondence for the rest of her life. He encouraged her writing, and later advised her about several of her books and sought her opinion on his own manuscripts. Liddell told Pym that he regarded her as the finest comic writer of the century after Ivy Compton-Burnett.
In the early years of their correspondence they often affected Miss ICB's style, writing parodies to describe their activities to each other. By this time Liddell had converted Barbara Pym to the ICB novels. The influence shows in her own fiction, and has been noted by critics. As early as the thirties she was using 'very Compton-Burnett' in her diaries to describe people and dialogue she meets, and several times mentions what a powerful influence ICB has on writers who read her.
When Liddell first met ICB in the early 1940's he wrote Pym a detailed description of the tea party, quoted in Hazel Holt's 'A Lot to Ask - A Life of Barbara Pym(Macmillan,1990)
Ivy Compton -Burnett - a short biography
Ivy Compton -Burnett and Virginia Woolf - what they thought of each other.
Ivy Compton -Burnett - a list of her novels. What's best? What first?
Ivy Compton -Burnett - -a typical novel.
Ivy Compton -Burnett - proverbs, clichés, aphorisms.
Ivy Compton -Burnett - Plautus the Cat and Friends.
Ivy Compton -Burnett - her own views on her writing and its morality.
Ivy Compton -Burnett - Robert Liddell on the Novels